


and indiana jones was never seen again

by godlet



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: Autism Spectrum, Autistic Peter, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Precious Peter Parker, Stimming, pressure stim and repetitive motions, rubber bands are great stim toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-07 19:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6821311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godlet/pseuds/godlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lie flat. Fold. Fold. Fold. Lie flat. Loop.</p><p>Memories of Uncle Ben have never felt so far away before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and indiana jones was never seen again

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty much every stim here I also do. They're comforting, but aren't necessarily signs of distress.

.

When Peter was seven, Uncle Ben used to go to work from 8 a.m. until sometime in the early evening. He would make dentures in a lab and come home smelling like something powdery, tacky, waxy.

 

Sometimes, he’d even bring home little plaster molds for Peter to play with and draw on.

 

They were clumsily shaped with thick, stubby fingers to look like bugs.

 

They smelled just like him.

 

While he was away, Peter would get to spend the day at school. Then at home with Aunt May.

 

In the hours between the end of school and when Uncle Ben would come back, sometimes they’d watch movies together. Aunt May particularly liked the Indiana Jones movies.

 

“Look!” Peter said one day in muted excitement, pointing at the TV from his position rolling around on the floor. “I know that person.”

 

“That’s Indiana Jones, honey,” Aunt May said from her chair. Despite the fact that they had watched these movies together several times before, she was well versed in the ways of Peter’s face blindness.

 

“I know who he is,” Peter repeated, though this time with conviction that only a child could have. “It’s dad.”

 

Aunt May didn’t really know what to say to that except, “He does look quite like your father with those glasses on, doesn’t he?”

 

Later on that night, in the middle of a slightly undercooked dinner of rubbery spaghetti with watery red sauce, Peter brought this line of thought up only once more.

 

“I saw you on TV today,” Peter told Uncle Ben. And then dropped the conversation with nary a glance to his Aunt May.

 

Even at that age – no, _especially_ at that age – Peter’s mind was operating differently from most other people’s around him.

 

Aunt May gave a significant look to Uncle Ben, alluding to a very lengthy talk later on.

 

In the present, Peter can only look back on that particular time of his life with something akin to nostalgic embarrassment. ‘Kids say the darnest things’ and all that.

 

He’s crouched in the basement, pressing himself pleasantly halfway under a wooden shelf that still smells like the tree, or maybe factory, that it came from.

 

Knowing Uncle Ben, it was probably straight from a tree. “Quality and hard work never go to waste,” he’d say, “If you can do the best, then don’t do anything less than a full job.”

 

Clutched in his hand is one of those long, thin, green rubber bands that Uncle Ben would leave all around the house, like ant trails. Aunt May would always throw her hands up with a “Why do I even bother?” whenever she found she had to clean up another left-behind green band.

 

Peter’s face pulls into the approximation of a smile; some sort of unconsciously desperate attempt at facilitated emotions.

 

The band in his clutches is perfectly molded to softness from about a month or so worth of hand and body oils. Peter’s been using it to stim so often that it no longer resembles the vaguely plastic, rough-patterned tool that it used to be.

 

With a deft flick, he starts fiddling with it anew. It’s soft – like running the tip of your finger down the side of someone’s inner arm.

 

He likes folding it until he can’t fold it anymore.

 

Lie flat. Fold. Fold. Fold. Lie flat. Loop.

 

His body makes the unconscious decision to fold his legs up underneath him until his feet are nicely squeezed under his thighs and his lower legs are tightly pressed, bending at the knees. He folds himself even more underneath the shelf, reveling in the sensation of being hunched over with no give against sitting up.

 

Fold. Fold. Fold. Lie flat. Loop. Fold. Fold. Fold. Lie flat. Loop.

 

Peter chews silently on the insides of his mouth. Just like the way Aunt May always told him not to.

 

“You’ll chew holes through your mouth,” she informed little Peter with raised eyebrows and a stern, gentle voice. “Then you won’t be able to eat anything. And that wouldn’t be very fun, now, would it be?”

 

Another half-smile; twitchy, automatic. He knows now, obviously, that the most he would get was sores from nibbling on one spot for too long.

 

Uncle Ben would always put his hands up and make a whooshing noise, like he could blow away all of Aunt May’s worries.

 

“Let the boy do what he wants,” he’d say, giving Peter a significant look. “He’ll figure himself out if you just leave him to it.”

 

Peter, now, sort of rolls his eyes. They could’ve been a sitcom like that.

 

The woman: always looking out for the boy’s social persona, cleaning him up and giving him advice in order to make him more presentable, more palatable.

 

The man: telling everyone how much it doesn’t matter, brushing off all of the woman’s concerns, and taking a ‘we’ll deal with it later’ attitude that would probably cause problems later.

 

Honestly, Peter doesn’t have a solid answer as to whether he would’ve preferred to follow Aunt May’s way or Uncle Ben’s.

 

Without Aunt May, he’d probably not be in the high school that he’s at now. He wouldn’t be given the same opportunities as other people, instead being stuck in a Special Ed program at a young age. While he could’ve used those accommodations, those programs leave a lot to be desired, and were fraught with abuse and deceit.

 

Without Uncle Ben… Well…

 

Peter looks down at the rubber band in his hand. He has the sudden jittery urge to move a bit more, so he scoots himself until he’s out from under the shelf and begins rocking. First, softly, timidly, then more comfortably as he builds up a rhythm.

 

Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

 

Fold. Fold. Lie flat. Loop. Fold. Fold. Fold. Lie flat. Loop.

 

He doesn’t think he’d ever feel as comfortable with his body, with his stimming and his stuttering and his blank-faced mien, if it weren’t for Uncle Ben. The person who waved his concerns off enough times to convince Peter that maybe his concerns weren’t his own problem, but someone else’s.

 

“Those people in school, who bully you,” Uncle Ben said one morning, “They react that way because they want to know more about you. They can’t handle the difference between you and them. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on what they do with that knowledge once they have it.”

 

Those mornings, when it was just him and Uncle Ben, right after the old man threw out his back and couldn’t go to work anymore, were filled with those sorts of conversations.

 

Peter always regarded them as an uncomfortable, slightly anxious time spent with his Uncle, but now he feels like he’d go through those lectures a hundred times more just to feel close again.

 

Uncle Ben usually made waffles. Frozen waffles that turned out mushy no matter what you did, and always got cold before you could get the whole thing in your mouth.

 

Cold, mushy, fibrous in the mouth, likening to an ice-cream cone, whatever those are made out of.

 

“Sugar wafer,” Peter mumbles quietly.

 

Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

 

Fold. Lie flat. Loop. Fold. Fold. Fold. Lie flat. Loop. Fold. Fold. Fold. Lie flat.

 

Drop.

 

Peter stares down at the green rubber band in his lap, forcefully stopping his body from rocking anymore. His mind gives a dissatisfied creak that he tries very hard not to let out as a noise; a leftover instinct from existing in a public place.

 

He doesn’t know whether or not this is the point where he feels something. He’s never known, actually.

 

…but he’s saved from his harrowing introspection by the stolen and rigged police radio fuzzing to life upstairs. An interesting upstart is occurring deeper within the city, in a part that would normally take practically an hour to get to with the mid-afternoon traffic.

 

As Peter stands and lightly launches himself back upstairs via the slightly risky maneuver of jumping from the bottom step to the top step – even when he ducks his head by a drastic amount, his hair still brushes the top – he decides that now isn’t the time for lollygagging.

 

“There’s danger afoot,” he mouths to himself, hastily shoving all that he needs into his already half-emptied backpack. “It’s time to go wrangle some overgrown housecats.”

 

Whoever told the zoo it was okay to transport _illegally genetically altered wild cats_ through the middle of the most populated part of the city was obviously due for a lay-off. And possibly jail time, if Spiderman had any say in it.

 

Aunt May wouldn’t be home for another few hours, as Peter came straight back from school due to a sensory overload while he was there. Some idiot had been in the chem lab and – either purposefully or accidentally, but Peter’s banking on accident this time – mixed something that turned unstable and exploded.

 

No one was grievously injured, but Peter had to leave school with a stuffed nose and ringing ears. Not his kind of siesta. He couldn’t even skateboard home without the vibrations from the wheels setting his super-senses off in some way.

 

“Oh well,” Peter mumbles obtusely as he jogs down the street. It smells like it’s about to rain, clogging his senses even more. “Like I said; danger. A foot. Several feet. No time to stop and stuff rose petals up your nose.”

 

He ducks into an alley closer to some taller buildings, changes, hides his loot, webs himself to a wall and begins to climb.

 

Spiderman looks at his reflection on the side of the shiny building, like he has so many times before these past few months. He distantly wonders how many people he’s accidentally stared at doing this.

 

As he hears a yowl that could only be from a super-charged, super angry cat followed by human screaming in the distance, webbing himself to another building and using his momentum to swing fast and hard, he smiles a little behind the mask.

 

Peter can’t help but feel like Uncle Ben would be very, very proud of what he’s chosen to do with his life, even if he can’t seem to identify the feelings that go with that imagined sentiment.

.


End file.
